This invention relates generally to vehicle repair equipment and more particularly to a machine for straightening the body and frame of a vehicle.
Numerous frame and body straightening equipment is available on the market today. These machines typically suffer from two basic drawbacks. The first is that the machines are usually not sufficiently adjustable to allow the machine to straighten the wide range of body and frame parts required to be straightened. As a result, using prior art frame and body straightening machines required extensive manual straightening operations to supplement the machine performed straightening operations in order to produce a satisfactory vehicle repair operation or required the extensive use of new body parts rather than the straightening and repair of these damaged body parts. The other basic drawback associated with these prior art body and frame straightening machines is that, while one force is applied to the bent section of the frame or body part, the opposing force to hold the vehicle in position are generally applied at positions remote from the bent portions of the body or frame of the vehicle. As a result, use of these prior art body and frame straightening devices frequently resulted in damage to the originally undamaged portion of the vehicle thereby greatly hampering the repair operation.